ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

Like a pair of Zeligs w/portfolio, Susan Schmidt and Deborah Smith seem to materialize on each fateful stage of the Akron music scene. In the 1960s, they led all-female r'n'r code-breakers the Poor Girls, who opened for big axes like Cream and stuck brassy ideas into the mind pockets of teen fan Chrissie Hynde. By the mid '70s, Schmidt and Smith played in Cinderella's Revenge and Friction, groups fronted by Cleveland's terminally towering neo-Rimbaud, Peter Laughner. After his death, they founded their own band, Chi-Pig, put out a single in 1978, and then placed another tune, "Apu Api [coincidentally Bengali for "Sister, Sister"] (Help Me)," on the legendary Akron Compilation from Stiff. In 1979 Chi-Pig recorded a whole album in Florida, but couldn't land a label, even as many fellow Akronites were laying rubber on the majors.

A quarter-century passes in a blink of CD technology, and suddenly Chi-Pig's entire oeuvre's there for us on one cdbaby.com-available disc, in what may be the keystone album of AkroNation. There are stylistic echoes of townies Tin Huey, the Waitresses, sometime collaborators Devo, even truckstop nymph Rachel Sweet, but Chi-Pig's music is Akron beyond flood tide: a river of riotgrrrl harmolodics rushing down a surreal soapbox-derby course past all the booji boys in their skinny ties. Smith's bass and Rich Roberts's drums keep the headlong beat looping, while Schmidt's free-verse guitar swerves in and out like a delivery van on an urgent chicken-and-pork-agenda run. With gender-sardonic lyrics about the eternal baffle-of-the-sexes cotillion, at a time when Elvis C. still hadn't writ the book. A dozen sass 'n' sprockets tunes distinguish Chi-Pig's Miami, which is no mere shouldabeen, but maybe 25 years ahead of its time even now. So (help me).
--Richard Riegel, "Are We Not Zen? We Are Repo!" The Village Voice (Sept 8-14, 2004)

[CD liner notes]: Midnight at The Bank in Akron, Ohio. Sitting at a corner table: two girls and a boy, dressed in Carmen Miranda's dancing clothes and sipping drinks with paper parasols. You noticed them. You wondered. You had a feeling they were smarter than you and that made you nervous. You had a feeling they were cooler than you in the way they didn't seem to need you, but knew you would have to notice them. You were not surprised when they got up from the table and the girls picked up guitars and started to play. And you were not surprised that the drummer, the boy, had jungle in his beat, nor that you began to dance. Their music was brittle and nimble, sometimes sultry and sometimes chirpy, the kind of razor-thin funk with white soul and a Motown bottom that seems at once studied and nonchalant, all brush-off and come-on. They played a song called "Boy" and they played a song called "Men." They sang about two-faced women and ring around the collar and heartache without regret. They undressed "Going to a Go-Go" and the harmonies gave you chills. And so you began to ask questions. You learned that their name, Chi-Pig, came from a barbecue joint: "chi" for chicken, "pig" for ribs. Urban shorthand, just like the music. You learned that the girls had played in bands with Peter Laughner, had jammed with Devo, and once gave a command performance in Akron with Tin Huey for members of Roxy Music. Then someone tells you a story. He tells you that one dark winter, Chris Blackwell, the president of Island Records, flew from the Bahamas into a legendary Akron snowstorm to unravel the mystery of the music in the sewers of a rusting city. He tells you that Blackwell asked the girls where their band got its name, and the three of them, the record company executive and the two girls, set off into the snowy night to steal the restaurant's sign. And that they returned empty-handed. A record was made in 1979 and it was never released. Then the band disappeared completely. For years it was all like a secret you almost knew. And so now you discover this document. You understand the slyness of its title. "Miami" -- because it was recorded in that city and because it tastes like it: dark rum and sugar and mint and crushed ice. And finally it makes sense.
--David Giffels, co-author, "Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!"

Chi-Pig's CD should have been released as an LP when it first came out in the 70's. Their lyrics are intelligent and still timely and the music holds up well today. I hope their previously recorded stuff gets released as well. Thanks, ladies. It's been WAY too long!

It is the time to show up what I have really loved...because the New Wave revival is appeared here in Tokyo now..."The B-52's ? Tin Huey ? Yeah, they are very nice...but I am sure that Chi-Pig was one of the best unknown New Wave band in the era."

I have been a Japanese fan of them for a long time and never imagined that their unreleased material other than the great 7inch would be out as a CD in the 21st century...anyway this is a must have.

Saw the band again last month after 25 years. The music is still as fresh as it was then. Bought 2 copies of "Miami" and am thrilled. My college-aged son says, "THIS is the kind of music all my friends and I have been looking for and can't find! Why didn't you buy this CD for me earlier!"

Kevin Smith was on the right track when he proclaimed Alanis Morrisette as God.

When I was a young man of twenty years it was my deep and unabididig desire to be a CHI-PIG groupie. I thought I would never hear these songs again. Thanks to the digital revolution, time has come un-done and like Steve Stemple says, "chicks CAN sing".

I have been a fan since I heard "Bountiful Living" on the 'Pure Pop for Perverted Pittsburgh' show on (then) underground radio station WYEP in the late '70's. I really enjoyed "Apu-Api" on the Akron sampler but was never able to unearth more of the Pig. I need more!! Surely, there has got to be more music in these ladies. Run to the nearest studio and give me more, please. Apu-Api HELP ME!

Chi-Pig reflects the new wave influences of the late 70s:
Devo, Talking Heads, Blondie, along with a dash of Motown.
You'll wish Chris Blackwell had followed up with a contract
that let the power-pop trio build on this white-funky,
quirky, smart album. Akron rocks on with sweet bass, sharp
guitar, and cool vocals in an record that deserved release
25 years ago when it was recorded.